Treatment Options

Treating Advanced Prostate Cancer

 

Despite treatment, prostate cancer sometimes reoccurs. A prostate tumor can grow beyond the prostate gland, and cancer cells also can travel through the lymph system or through the blood to reach other parts of the body, such as the bones.

This is metastatic prostate cancer. Although tumors appear in distant sites—such as the lymph nodes or bones—it is not a new cancer, it is a recurrence of the original prostate cancer.

In some cases, the prostate cancer has already metastasized, or spread, by the time a man learns that he has the disease.

Advanced, or metastatic, prostate cancer cannot be cured, but new treatments may put your cancer in remission and give you a good quality of life for years.

If you have advanced prostate cancer, SCCA can offer you new medical procedures and treatments, as well as access to clinical trials, that your community doctor may not know about. No one at SCCA will tell you that a diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer is not serious, but there is hope.

Your doctor may recommend treating your advanced prostate cancer with chemotherapy. Other options for managing your cancer are radiation therapy and hormone therapy.

Ask your doctor about taking part in clinical trials of promising treatments for metastatic disease.

More information on Treatment Options:

• Surgery
• Radiation therapy
• Hormone therapy
• Chemotherapy
• Watchful waiting
• Treating advanced prostate cancer

October 2004